Thanks for checking out the video, I appreciate it! And thank you for clarifying that. I am not familiar with the video game/universe so I wasn't sure what the series was covering. Did you check it out yet? What did you think of it?
While I appreciate your thoughts, let me offer a different perspective. Long reply ahead. I love that there are now “prestige tv” shows that aren’t “white male violence shows.” They are much more diverse. The audience for “prestige tv” is no longer just 40-year old white men. I am by no means using that as a pejorative, just using typical demographic terms (I am a white woman myself). It would be blasphemous for me to reduce the well-regarded late 90s and 2000s shows down to that as they are obviously very well-made, well-written and well-acted. But truth be told, the cop, gangster, mob, or drug lord shows have never really appealed to me. I am a female viewer if it’s relevant. Now we have shows such as Reservation Dogs, Insecure, I May Destroy You, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Pachinko, Hacks, Broad City, Mr. Robot, Shogun, and Abbott Elementary. And the foreign shows we now have access to everywhere! Dark, Squid Game, Borgen, Babylon Berlin, My Brilliant Friend, Gomorrah. Nothing exactly like those shows existed 20 years ago, and I would encourage checking them out. Even the newer such shows with white male protagonists seemed to deviate from being significantly based on them being physically violent. Succession for instance, which is a personal favorite of mine, was not exactly groundbreaking, but it notably managed to be an HBO drama series with virtually violence or nudity. I am not going to say that anything has come around that’s rivaled The Sopranos or The Wire, that would be blasphemy and is an impossible standard to meet, but I absolutely think a bunch of shows have come along that are equivalent to Six Feet Under etc. And I think shows today are placed under more scrutiny. People seem to be willing to excuse multiple bad seasons of particular older shows out of nostalgia. There are people out there who believe that no show made past 2014 could possibly be considered great. I feel that HBO’s output over the past 5-10 years is still unrivaled and as good as anything they’ve ever made minus The Wire and The Sopranos: Succession, Barry, Mare of Easttown, The Leftovers, Chernobyl, I May Destroy You, Big Little Lies, The Deuce, The White Lotus, Insecure, The Righteous Gemstones, The Last of Us, Veep, Somebody Somewhere… If the “golden age” of tv is over, it will be for different reasons than most people think. It will be because tv execs back then understood that tv is a writer’s medium, and that you should cast actors who are talented & experienced but unknown. That described Jon Hamm, Edie Falco, James Gandolfini, Dominic West, and Idris Elba at the time of being cast in their respective major shows. Those shows were star-makers, not star-vehicles (while those actors never became movie stars, they were objectively very successful in tv in addition to the shows they’re most known for, with the exception of James Gandolfini whom we tragically lost too soon). Casting Meryl Streep in a tv show is not only unnecessary from a financial standpoint, it also breaks immersion and ruins the novelty of a show. Apple TV+ is the worst offender of thinking throwing A-list actors in a show will fix its problems. Also way too many shows nowadays are based on IP rather than being original stories. Deadwood, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, and The Wire were all original stories. Furthermore, having years between seasons because a show has too much SFX required and a cast of famous actors busy filming movies In-between seasons ruins the momentum of a show. Seasons are also becoming too short. That’s all I’ve got for now.
Thank you for checking out the video and sharing your thoughts, I really appreciate it! Though we disagree on some things, you make several fair points here. Your point about more diversity in the types of prestige tv shows now is a great one. I really enjoyed Reservation Dogs and that is such a good example of a show that never would have been greenlit even 5 years ago but was given a chance today. I agree that it is a great thing and while a show like Reservation Dogs is a comedy it fits the general mold of the shows I am talking about here in the video. The type of show that comes from an original place and was developed by a creator with a unique voice like Sterlin Harjo. In my opinion, these are the shows that we need more of in the current landscape of TV but unfortunately they are few and far between at least from what I am seeing currently. Your last paragraph here is outstanding and I completely agree with all those points. In fact, I wish I had thought to mention some of them in this video because stuff like the length of seasons, casting big name stars from the movie space, and the time in between seasons are all major contributors to the current downfall of TV in my opinion. We are definitely on the same page there. Do you see these things improving over the next few years or only getting worse?
@Chatterbox_Reviews Thanks for responding! I appreciate it. I haven’t typed up a full reply yet, but I would highly recommend a few articles that encapsulate a lot of my thoughts on my last paragraph, and that I think you might be interested in. Mostly about the big name stars part and shows having higher production values than actual substance. There was a great NYT article that came out this weekend called “The Comfortable Problem of Mid TV.” It particularly hits the nail on the head regarding Apple shows. Also, critic Alan Sepinwall of the Rolling Stone wrote a review on the miniseries Apples Never Fall that goes into depth on these topics. It’s called ‘“Apples Never Fall’ Is the Latest Example of a Bigger Problem: A-List Emmy-Bait.” And the 2022 Time Magazine article, “You’ve Heard of Oscar Bait. 2022 Is the Year of Emmy Bait.”
To be fair, Fallout is just the next installment, in a different format.
Thanks for checking out the video, I appreciate it! And thank you for clarifying that. I am not familiar with the video game/universe so I wasn't sure what the series was covering. Did you check it out yet? What did you think of it?
While I appreciate your thoughts, let me offer a different perspective. Long reply ahead. I love that there are now “prestige tv” shows that aren’t “white male violence shows.” They are much more diverse. The audience for “prestige tv” is no longer just 40-year old white men. I am by no means using that as a pejorative, just using typical demographic terms (I am a white woman myself). It would be blasphemous for me to reduce the well-regarded late 90s and 2000s shows down to that as they are obviously very well-made, well-written and well-acted. But truth be told, the cop, gangster, mob, or drug lord shows have never really appealed to me. I am a female viewer if it’s relevant. Now we have shows such as Reservation Dogs, Insecure, I May Destroy You, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Pachinko, Hacks, Broad City, Mr. Robot, Shogun, and Abbott Elementary. And the foreign shows we now have access to everywhere! Dark, Squid Game, Borgen, Babylon Berlin, My Brilliant Friend, Gomorrah. Nothing exactly like those shows existed 20 years ago, and I would encourage checking them out. Even the newer such shows with white male protagonists seemed to deviate from being significantly based on them being physically violent. Succession for instance, which is a personal favorite of mine, was not exactly groundbreaking, but it notably managed to be an HBO drama series with virtually violence or nudity.
I am not going to say that anything has come around that’s rivaled The Sopranos or The Wire, that would be blasphemy and is an impossible standard to meet, but I absolutely think a bunch of shows have come along that are equivalent to Six Feet Under etc. And I think shows today are placed under more scrutiny. People seem to be willing to excuse multiple bad seasons of particular older shows out of nostalgia. There are people out there who believe that no show made past 2014 could possibly be considered great.
I feel that HBO’s output over the past 5-10 years is still unrivaled and as good as anything they’ve ever made minus The Wire and The Sopranos: Succession, Barry, Mare of Easttown, The Leftovers, Chernobyl, I May Destroy You, Big Little Lies, The Deuce, The White Lotus, Insecure, The Righteous Gemstones, The Last of Us, Veep, Somebody Somewhere…
If the “golden age” of tv is over, it will be for different reasons than most people think. It will be because tv execs back then understood that tv is a writer’s medium, and that you should cast actors who are talented & experienced but unknown. That described Jon Hamm, Edie Falco, James Gandolfini, Dominic West, and Idris Elba at the time of being cast in their respective major shows. Those shows were star-makers, not star-vehicles (while those actors never became movie stars, they were objectively very successful in tv in addition to the shows they’re most known for, with the exception of James Gandolfini whom we tragically lost too soon). Casting Meryl Streep in a tv show is not only unnecessary from a financial standpoint, it also breaks immersion and ruins the novelty of a show. Apple TV+ is the worst offender of thinking throwing A-list actors in a show will fix its problems. Also way too many shows nowadays are based on IP rather than being original stories. Deadwood, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, and The Wire were all original stories. Furthermore, having years between seasons because a show has too much SFX required and a cast of famous actors busy filming movies In-between seasons ruins the momentum of a show. Seasons are also becoming too short.
That’s all I’ve got for now.
Thank you for checking out the video and sharing your thoughts, I really appreciate it!
Though we disagree on some things, you make several fair points here. Your point about more diversity in the types of prestige tv shows now is a great one. I really enjoyed Reservation Dogs and that is such a good example of a show that never would have been greenlit even 5 years ago but was given a chance today. I agree that it is a great thing and while a show like Reservation Dogs is a comedy it fits the general mold of the shows I am talking about here in the video. The type of show that comes from an original place and was developed by a creator with a unique voice like Sterlin Harjo. In my opinion, these are the shows that we need more of in the current landscape of TV but unfortunately they are few and far between at least from what I am seeing currently.
Your last paragraph here is outstanding and I completely agree with all those points. In fact, I wish I had thought to mention some of them in this video because stuff like the length of seasons, casting big name stars from the movie space, and the time in between seasons are all major contributors to the current downfall of TV in my opinion. We are definitely on the same page there. Do you see these things improving over the next few years or only getting worse?
@Chatterbox_Reviews Thanks for responding! I appreciate it. I haven’t typed up a full reply yet, but I would highly recommend a few articles that encapsulate a lot of my thoughts on my last paragraph, and that I think you might be interested in. Mostly about the big name stars part and shows having higher production values than actual substance.
There was a great NYT article that came out this weekend called “The Comfortable Problem of Mid TV.” It particularly hits the nail on the head regarding Apple shows. Also, critic Alan Sepinwall of the Rolling Stone wrote a review on the miniseries Apples Never Fall that goes into depth on these topics. It’s called ‘“Apples Never Fall’ Is the Latest Example of a Bigger Problem: A-List Emmy-Bait.” And the 2022 Time Magazine article, “You’ve Heard of Oscar Bait. 2022 Is the Year of Emmy Bait.”